Bernard Crick

Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008) was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views can be summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as opposed to a "politics of thought" or of ideology, and he held that "political power is power in the subjunctive mood." He was a leading critic of behaviouralism.

Crick was born in England and educated at Whitgift School, University College London, and the London School of Economics (LSE) for his doctorate (1950–52). He began teaching at Harvard and taught at McGill before returning to Britain and the LSE in 1956, where he taught for 11 years.

During his time at LSE, recollections of which appear in his contribution to My LSE, Crick craved for greater recognition than his Senior Lecturership signified. LSE's promotion system was notoriously slow at the time. When appointed Professor of Political Theory and Political Institutions at Sheffield in 1965 Crick told Beaver, the LSE student newspaper, that he was "going to a better place from the point of view of teaching students". This may have been true but only a half-truth about his motivation: he was going quite reasonably for a professorship.

Crick sponsorsed the LSE's new-formed "Society Against Racial Discrimination" (1963). The indigenous British, he remarked, should treat immigrant ethnicities "as equals – and as no more than equals". At least one member of audience wondered who proposed treating immigrants as "more than equals". The remark was an arrow without a target.

Any university teacher has to manage the transition from school to university for his or her students. A first-year undergraduate in 1963, Geoffrey Thomas (later of the Philosophy department, Birkbeck College, London) recalls his naive bewilderment at a clash between authorities. Professor H. R. G. Greaves promoted one view of cabinet collective responsibility in his lectures, and Dr Crick quite another in his classes. "You might be interested to know," Thomas innocently remarked with some bafflement in a tutorial, "that your views on collective responsiibity are polar opposite to those of Professor Greaves". "Then," Crick urbanely observed, "having equal access to both of us you are in a position of unique advantage." A student learnt one difference between school and university that afternoon.

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